Sweater
by Soprano892
Summary: Just a little peak behind one of the flashbacks of Harry Potter's accidental magic when he was young. Apology to ALL my readers at the end! You don't even have to read the story, just the AN, please! Reviews are welcome, but I'm not a review-whore.


**Just a little something that popped into my head after reading about it so many times in the first book. Inspired by one single example of accidental magic.**

**Enjoy!**

Contrary to popular belief, Petunia Dursley did not hate her nephew. Everyone seems to jump to the wrong conclusion about that, saying that if she loved him, she never would have done some of the things that she did to him. But those people will never understand. Everything she did, she was doing to _protect_ him.

She was constantly reminding herself of how she _had_ to do this, if he wanted a good life, if he wanted a life at all. Yes, the things she did hurt him in many ways, just as it hurt her to dish out all those ill-deserved punishments and to shove him away under the stairs. She had to keep reminding herself to make it stop, before her nephew went the same way as his mother, as Petunia's beloved Lily.

That horrible, despicable _magic_ had taken Lily away from her, in more than one way. It took her away from home, from school, and from life. More than that, it broke their sisterly bond, the one that they both thought would last forever and that nothing could get between.

She knew that it wasn't just because of the magic. She realized that she had made her own mistakes, and there was no time that she regretted them more than the morning of November 2nd, 1981 when she found her orphaned nephew on her doorstep and read the fateful letter that told her that her sister had been murdered, and it was too late to ever right her wrongs and make up for her horrible ways of the past.

But she could still make it up to her. Lily Evans Potter lived on through her son, Harry, and Petunia vowed to protect him in ways that she never could protect her sister.

But she was very tempted to cut him just a little bit of slack…

Harry was being difficult. Petunia was just trying to get him to wear the sweatshirt, but Harry didn't want to. (Personally, Petunia couldn't blame him; the thing was utterly repulsive.) She tugged and tugged, but the thing seemed to have a mind of its own, and it didn't like Harry.

Things were getting ridiculous; there should be no reason for the thing to still resist after so much pulling. She pulled the sweater back to examine it and was startled at what she found: the sweatshirt that had been, if anything, too big for Harry, would never even fit on a baby.

Petunia wasn't stupid; she knew what had happened. The little boy had just used accidental magic. The rule that had been set down by her husband was that he should be punished for anything like this. Her heart wasn't made of stone, and she hated making this boy miserable in the house of the only family he had left. No one else had witnessed the event, so maybe she could explain it away.

"Well, I guess it must have shrunk in the wash," she lied.

**Because we all know that Petunia can't be totally evil. As Dumbledore pointed out, she did take Harry in.**

**MAJOR APOLOGY!**

**Listen, to all of my faithful readers, I'm really sorry. I know everyone says this, but I'm going through some tough times.**

**My dad has cancer.**

**So I've kind of been juggling school, homework, looking for a job, and helping my dad out at home for now. I'm a junior in high school, so I'm also looking at colleges.**

**I just typed this up in about 15 minutes and I've been meaning to do it forever, because no one has really noticed Petunia's mercy in this moment, mostly because the reference lasted about a paragraph.**

**Anyway, I'm going to try to update Wizard May Cry, post a brand-new story, and fix up the first chapter of A New Universe along with a second chapter.**

**For those who read Harry Potter and the Year of the Shinobi clash, that is SO horrible and I apologize for ever posting something so childishly written on this website. That story will be getting a TOTAL makeover! It'll be the same plotline, just written SO much more maturely.**


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